We take up the Book, and find that it purports to be a relation of the planting of the Church of Christ, of its laws and ordinances, and of the life, death and resurrection of its Founder, written by eight of his companions, at various periods and places, toward the close of the first century.

There is a general opinion among all Christians that the Book was composed then, and by these persons.

We want to know why they think so?
In short, is it a genuine book, or merely a collection of myths with the apostles' names appended to them by some lying monks?
Is it a fact, or a forgery?
In any historical inquiry, we want some fixed point of time from which to take our departure; and in this case we want to know if there is any period of antiquity in which undeniably this Book was in existence, and received as genuine by Christian societies.

For I will not suppose my readers as ignorant as some of those Infidels who allege that it was made by the Bible Society.

It used to be the fashion with those of them who pretended to learning, to affirm that it was made by the Council of Laodicea, in A.D.